The Right Thing
by bequirk
Summary: As she searches for Thor, Jane needs a little reminder that she is, in fact, doing the right thing, which Darcy provides.


**My beta, dysprositos, is the absolute best. Thanks, beta buddy!**

**Just some pre-Thor 2 feels. This borrows heavily from the Thor 2 prelude comics, which I highly recommend reading if you can; they're awesome.**

* * *

Thor and his friends had been gone for a couple hours when Jane left the RV and wandered back over to the site where they'd left. She stood there, unmoving, staring off into space.

After about thirty minutes of watching this, Darcy went and got her friend slash boss a blanket, draping it around Jane's shoulders. Erik had left with the SHIELD people a while ago, or maybe not exactly _with_ them, but he'd taken one look at Jane and split. He'd never been very good with feelings, Darcy knew. Then, after stomping back up the steps of their shared RV noisily, she grabbed a clean pan out of the cabinet and checked the tiny pantry for chocolate powder.

They were out, so she grabbed her wallet and headed down the street to the little grocery store, somehow miraculously still open even after the town'd been all but destroyed, buying a quart of milk and a thing of chocolate powder and after a quick thought, a bag of marshmallows. She stuffed a ten into the tip jar on her way out the door, least she could do after what had gone down.

Back in their RV, glad the old hunk o'junk had survived the giant robot attack, Darcy turned on the stove and made hot chocolate just like her mom always made it. Turning the stove off but leaving the pan on it to keep the liquid warm, she headed back down the street, where Jane had gone from staring at the middle distance to staring at the strange pattern left on the ground from Thor and his friends' departure.

Gently taking hold of Jane's arm, Darcy said, "C'mon inside for a bit, it won't be dark for a while and we can come back out to take pictures of that later." Jane hesitated, so Darcy added, "Promise."

At that, Jane allowed herself to be led inside, and Darcy pushed her towards a chair while she poured their drinks.

"How many marshmallows?"

Coming out of her daze, Jane echoed, "Marshmallows?"

"Welcome back to the land of the living, boss. Yeah, marshmallows. Three?"

"Sure."

Darcy dropped the marshmallows into their mugs and turned around, handing Jane's to her and sitting down at the small table.

They drank in silence for a few minutes, Jane shooting Darcy an appreciative smile over the top of her mug, before Jane asked, "I didn't just make all that up, right? That really happened?"

"Nope, tall blond and alien was definitely here, and totally into you to boot. And he had some freakishly tall friends, and they battled a giant robot, kinda destroyed the whole town and then they left us holding the bag. And the Men in Black still have our stuff."

"Not for long," Jane grinned.

"Probably not. We didn't do a damn thing wrong, and that's that. Hey, Jane, you okay?"

"Yeah. I just... Been a weird few days, hasn't it?"

"That's an understatement."

They lapsed back into silence for a few minutes, until Jane spoke up, "Looking for him, that Bifrost thing, is that a good idea? Or should I forget it? He said he'd be back, but it's been...hours, and somehow I don't think he'll be turning up again today or tomorrow."

"Hell no. You're doing the right thing, boss lady, and besides, think how awesome it'll be to publish tons of papers on all this crap. Bet you'll win all kinds of awards. And you'll get big and muscled back here with you. Eventually."

"Yeah," Jane smiled. "Thanks, Darcy."

"Not a problem. Unless I don't get my iPod back, and then we're gonna have one."

Sure enough, their things were returned a few days later, left in boxes piled neatly outside the door of Jane's lab, along with a post-it stuck to the top box that read 'Sorry. -PC'

Jane and Darcy exchanged an eye roll at that.

* * *

Six months later, they were no closer to finding Thor, Erik had been hired to work for the creepy government agency, and their funding was drying up. Darcy's internship was long over, but she'd decided to stay because _someone_ needed to make sure Jane ate and slept and stuff.

Darcy was curled up in a chair on one side of the room, working on her online coursework. Jane was due for a feeding and a walk in about fifteen minutes (she hadn't moved all morning) so it startled Darcy to hear her name being called.

"Darcy?"

"Yeah, you find something?" Darcy set her laptop aside and stood up to go look over Jane's shoulder.

"No. Yes. Kind of." Jane sighed. "But that's not what I wanted to ask you. Things haven't been going well, and I just, I don't know if I should keep on going with this. I mean, there's other things I could be researching. Is he still out there?"

Darcy grabbed Jane's shoulders. "You listen to me, Jane Foster. You're doing a damn good thing by looking for him. He said he'd be back, and he's not back, so something could be wrong. And when you find him, we can fix that. So don't you stop looking just because you're feeling down today. You're doing the right thing, you hear me?"

"Yeah, Darcy, I do. You're right."

"'Sides, you just said you'd found something. So tell you what, you save that, and then we're gonna go down the street for lunch; I'm sick of eating my terrible attempts at sandwiches."

"All right. And Darcy? Thanks."

* * *

When the offer to come to Tromsø came in, they were both thrilled, and there was some impromptu jumping up and down and shrieking right there in the midst of Jane's cluttered work space.

Jane had been wanting to get better pictures of a certain celestial formation or whatever (Darcy couldn't always follow her hyperactive stars-speak) for a while, and this seemed like a great chance to do that.

But then they got there.

And no one seemed to be expecting them.

It was fishy as hell, and as soon as they were alone, Darcy grabbed her laptop and started hacking. She'd picked it up as a teenager, along with a few other less-than-legal activities, although she'd never guessed it would have come in this handy. Or that she'd be hacking from an observatory in Tromsø.

She got through the firewall and was just wrapping up with the last of the security protocols when she started seeing the SHIELD logo all over everything.

It took several tries to get Jane's attention from where she was arguing with one of the observatory's employees at the door of the tiny room they'd been assigned, but Darcy got the footage of New York up on her screen and finally got Jane to come over.

They chewed out the observatory employees slash SHIELD agents majorly once the battle was over, but the agents refused to put Jane and Darcy on a plane back to New York.

Jane tried calling Agent Coulson's cell, but it went straight to voicemail. A tense standoff later, a balding agent with glasses arrived, pushing past the doors and fixing them with a hard stare.

"Get your things, I'll debrief you on the way back to New York."

He was Agent Sitwell, and he refused to answer them when they asked why Agent Coulson wasn't there.

Their weirdly short flight back to New York afforded little information, and Sitwell refused to let them access the internet on the plane-thingie they were on.

And if this was how they debriefed all their agents, Darcy wasn't sure how they managed to function as an organization because apparently all the value she and Jane had to SHIELD were as Erik's babysitters.

That pissed Jane off, but she couldn't say no to taking care of her friend. So they went back to New York. For Erik.

* * *

Thor wasn't there, that much was clear, but the next days were a flurry of taking care of Erik and signing non-disclosure agreement after non-disclosure agreement as the details of what had happened here slowly came together.

Agent Jack-Booted Thug, otherwise known as Hawkeye, swung by, not looking much better than Erik, and he was the one who took them aside and explained about Agent Coulson.

And that pissed both of them off, both at SHIELD and at Loki.

Once Erik was settled, recovering, they decamped back to Puente Antiguo for more research and trials.

Darcy'd picked up a few tidbits from SHIELD agents, and they weren't about to give up.

* * *

The offer to go to England was genuine, they checked, and it came at a great time for them.

So they went.


End file.
